


Berlin

by thestarsjustblinkforus



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Mild Gore, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23160631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarsjustblinkforus/pseuds/thestarsjustblinkforus
Summary: It’s when he’s picking glass out of her back that she decides she wants him.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 6
Kudos: 37





	Berlin

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place roughly 6 months after [Contact](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16927620).

It’s when he’s picking glass out of her back that she decides she wants him. 

The realization comes to her as he gently pulls a particularly long shard out from under her skin and she tenses despite herself because it _hurts_ , and his hand is suddenly there, light between her shoulder blades, not holding her down but saying, _I’ve got you, it's ok_. He carefully works the glass out, catches the rivulet of blood with a readied piece of gauze, pressing it against her and she gasps sharply, she bites her lip and thinks about biting his.

He glances up at her, not expecting her eyes, but he finds them and she doesn’t look away. She rarely looks away first, but it’s not a challenge this time and somehow he knows it, he knows the difference.

He pauses.

_He finds her in the bathroom of the safe house straining in front of a broken mirror to reach the worst of it and he doesn't stop to unsling his weapon from his back and set it down before reaching past her for the gauze she’s prepared._

_She snatches it away from him, "I can do it myself-" and he mutters under his breath, “Because you do everything yourself, right, Natalia?”_

_She glances at him in the mirror standing just over her shoulder and he speaks to her reflection, arms folded across his chest, eyes hard as he fumes, “You threw yourself through a plate glass window instead of trusting that backup was coming. That **I** was coming.”_

_“I had a way out,” she says dismissively and carefully slides the straps of her ruined dress off her shoulders to better survey the damage._

_“You were on the 5th floor.”_

_Pieces of glass fall to the tiles tinged with her blood as she peels the shredded silk away from her skin. She murmurs “Good thing there was a canopy-”_

_“You don’t trust me.”_

_She busies herself with untying the sash at her waist, more glass falling, scraping as it goes. She is making a mess. Very unprofessional._

_“It’s not personal, Barton.”_

_“It is personal.” He reaches past her again and punches on the faucet filling the bowl with water as her dress puddles at her feet and she smacks it off before turning to him fully to argue, nose to nose,_

_“I’ve **got** thi-”_

_“I know, I know. You’re quadruple-jointed and can probably dig the glass out with your fucking toes, but I can do it faster and without getting blood all over the goddamn place so let me just fucking do this!”_

_“I can wait until transport then!”_

_“Which isn’t coming for another two hours. Fuck’s sake, I fucking owe you for Volgograd, alright? Will that make it easier to accep-”_

_“You were going to bleed out. Fury would have **left me** in Volgograd if I’d let you-”_

_“Romanoff. You’re a porcupine right now. A stubborn, getting-your-DNA-all-over-the-place porcupine.”_

_“You don’t keep bleach in your safehouses? What kind of amateu-”_

_“Natalia!”_

_“Fine!” she snaps, exasperated, “Fix me!”_

_He steps aside and sweeps out an arm in an exaggerated **after you** and she pushes the roll of gauze to his chest as she passes, trying not to wince as she swoops down to grab the bottle of alcohol off the floor._

_He makes sure the windows are covered before flicking on the light and unrolling a plastic tarp as she takes a swig from the bottle and nearly gags. It’s cheap. Bought for medical purposes only._

_He holds out his hand for it and she smirks slightly when he takes a drink himself and makes a face, “Jesus, that’s bad.” He coughs, gestures with the bottle, “On the tarp, Red,” and she pauses just a beat too long to make sure he knows the concession is on her terms._

_He looks away, busying himself preparing the bandages as she unhooks her bra and lies down on her stomach._

_Everything aches. She hadn’t broken any bones this time but she had landed badly and can already feel the bruises blooming._

_She rests her head on her crisscrossed arms covered in a spiderweb of scratches and waits for him to begin, realizing she can not remember the last time someone has tended to her like this. On the Outside, everything was done herself with what she had. On the Inside, they would drop her in the hospital wing with everything she would need and would let her get to it. Part of the training - learn how to save yourself when you have everything at your disposal and also nothing. Self-sufficiency at all times under every circumstance. If you ever fell unconscious and were unable to help yourself, well, you deserved to die._

_She thinks if she took the time to explain to him why she is the way she is he would understand but she’s not sure she wants to be understood. She thinks she could also remind him that she heals more quickly than normal people._

_But his hands are very warm._

_And he’s careful and quick and sucks in his breath in sympathy when he presses the alcohol-soaked bandages to her skin every time he removes a sliver._

_The pattern of the pain becomes almost pleasurable after a while. The anticipation and then the sting. The drag, the gentle press. The cleansing burn, another gentle press. She looks at him as he works. At his mouth that is quick to smile, smirk, laugh, pressed now into a hard concerned line._

_His eyes meet hers, checking for discomfort, and they catch._

_**You don’t trust me** , he’d said before in the bathroom, and his eyes say it again now, misunderstanding her watchfulness. _

_“Trusting you now, aren’t I?” she answers and her voice sounds sharper than she means it to, combative still. Maybe also annoyed that he thinks that was where her mind was and not somewhere more interesting._

_His hands continue their work._

_“Should be the other way around maybe," he says it lightly, but there's tension underneath. He's irritated again. "I think we both know the only thing stopping you from taking one of these shards and making the most of me with it is Fury’s promise to get you out for good.”_

_It stings like a piece of glass and she mutters against her wrist, “I thought that was your promise.”_

_“It is.” Serious eyes, firm press. “I do. Promise. Even if you’re a pain in the ass.”_

_He gets up to retrieve a bowl of water and a towel from the kitchenette and she says nothing when he returns even though he looks like a waiter with it draped over his arm like that._

_He looks down at her, shaking his head a little at her bloodied back and mutters inaudibly under his breath as he kneels beside her again._

_He dips the towel into the bowl, rings it out and carefully begins wiping the blood away and it feels nice for a bit despite the sting when suddenly she jolts violently and “Hang on, yeah, yeah, I can see it now - there’s one more… It’s a bad one…”_

_His hand lands lightly between her shoulder blades, **I've got you, it's ok.**_

_He quickly draws it out, her short sharp gasp and a final alcohol press following, his palm holding the gauze down and curving around her side to keep it in place, his fingers brushing the underside of her breast._

_His eyes meet her eyes and they are soft with an apology he doesn't need to give and she breathes out and they hold._

_They hold._

_And she wants._

“Natalia...” he says, " _Natasha_ ," she corrects, and the want rushes to the skin under his fingers in a blush like ink spreading through water.

"Natasha..."

_...the only thing stopping you..."_

“You think I would kill you, Barton?” She asks it quietly, seriously, bothered by what he’d said. 

He smirks slightly, softening a little, “Maybe not today.” 

“No," she agrees, softening too, "Not today.” They both fall silent and they do not look away and she understands breathing patterns, pupil dilation, the undulation of his throat as he swallows, his pulse point fluttering, just there, and so it does not feel like a risk to say, to offer outright, “I would do other things.” 

He pauses, his hand still curved around her side.

"After all," she murmurs, " _Two hours_ , yes?”

He stares at her and he says nothing and he does not move.

And then the pressure of his hand is suddenly gone, replaced with a bandage slapped down quickly, and she bites back a wince as he gets up, grabbing the bottle on his way and swigs the last of it before pitching it into the trash where it clangs against the metal.

He stalks into the bathroom. 

Turns on the faucet. 

Coughs once.

And then there's the sudden clatter of his bow and arrow as they hit the floor, finally released from his back. 

He’s angry.

Not just irritated like before.

 _She’s_ irritated. 

She hadn't imagined it, all of those moments over the past few months, his eyes on her when he thought she wasn't looking, wasn't paying attention.

She’s always paying attention.

And she knows every time he’s thought about it.

In Zurich, pressed tightly against her between train cars, his hand on her inner thigh, feeling for the knife she had strapped there after his had been kicked from his hand, his eyes on her eyes, her hand braced against the door holding it shut, the other with a gun pointed at the window. She had closed her eyes briefly at the grazing of his fingertips and when she had opened them again he was looking at her mouth. 

She follows him to the bathroom, stands in the doorway watching as he briskly washes her blood from his hands, the bunch and release of the muscles in his back as he dips his head to splash water on his face. 

In Munich, at that gala, her hand on his chest, inside his coat, sliding up to surreptitiously retrieve a tracker while their target looked on, interested in them both, wanting them both and they had leaned into it for his benefit. She had bit the curve of his jaw lightly, a slight drag of her teeth, and had winked at the mark across the way as his fingers had dug into her hips briefly, reflexively.

It’s there.

She just hadn’t decided if she wanted to do anything about it yet.

He speaks into his hands, his voice muffled, feeling her behind him, “You need a bell, Romanoff.”

“Not a cat.”

“Nope, a spider.” He straightens, water dripping down his neck, snaking beneath his collar, and she watches the damp make a Rorschach across his back.

She quirks an eyebrow at him.

“You think I’m _spinning a web-_ ” 

“I think you’re not wearing any clothes.”

He turns away from the mirror abruptly to face her.

“I’m wearing shoes,” she points out and sweeps a foot forward, the loosened ribbons falling from her calves and trailing a half-circle across the tiles dotted with her blood.

He stares at her and she thinks of the Alps.

“What are you doin’, Romanoff.”

His eyes blue like the Alps.

"What are you..."

In the cable car, laughing at something she’d said and she doesn’t recall what it was but she remembers the smile he had flashed her before turning away to the window to shake his head in wonder at them and maybe that was when she decided. Maybe it was then.

She steps into the small bathroom, trapping him against the sink as she places her hands on it, gripping the porcelain on either side of his hips and she looks up at him.

“What I want, Barton.”

He thought about it in Volgograd, right before the mission went to shit.

He looks down at her and she knows he is thinking about it now, just like he was out there. She knows the signs, could read them blind.

But he does not move.

He does not touch.

“You know what?” she says, still looking up at him, still close enough if either of them took a single deep breath they would.

“What?”

He does not move.

“You are very disappointing.”

He swallows.

“You been talking to my father?” 

"Why? Is _he_ interested?"

She steps back, releasing him from the cage of her arms, and snatches her dress up from the floor at his feet. She turns away from him to pull it back on, swallowing a wince as she does and a bead of fresh blood winds down her back. She can feel it like an itch and his hand is suddenly on her shoulder, his breath exploding in a hot frustrated sigh at the back of her neck and then his voice, gruff in her ear, “Stop moving.” 

And she does. She obeys.

He reaches behind him for one of the squares of gauze she had prepared earlier, his hand staying put on her shoulder to steady her as he slips the other inside her dress, follows the path the blood has made until it curves around her hip and she looks at him over her shoulder when he slows to a stop at her abdomen.

 _Warsaw_ , she thinks stubbornly.

His thumb brushes her skin above the gauze, once, twice, almost of its own volition.

_Odessa. At that cafe near the water._

She closes her eyes.

 _Prague_.

He withdraws his hand.

_Barton..._

He zips up her dress, careful not to touch the bandages, the latticework of scrapes, her skin again. He drags it from the very small of her back to just between her shoulder blades that twitch slightly, remembering the weight of his hand between them and when he finishes she does not move and he does not move.

They breathe together for a moment, his out to her in, the only point of contact the zipper still in his grasp, his other hand no longer on her shoulder but flat against the wall by her head supporting his body as it leans-

_**“*Barton*”** _

Pause.

He answers the comm, his voice rough, low, “Yeah.”

_**“*Transport in twenty.*”** _

“Yeah.”

He lets go of the zipper, his hand dropping to his side and she turns her head away but she can still feel his eyes, his breath at the nape of her neck.

_Berlin._

“Natasha...”

She waits.

“It’s not a good idea.”

She nods.

“I’ll get the bleach.”


End file.
